Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, later referred to in this review as Hearthstone, began as a Blizzard Entertainment love story to their vast world build in the Warcraft series and their love for paper trading card games. The small team behind its origins wanted to solve the average problems plaguing most trading card game simulators like the delay on their opponent’s response time or long time to play at startup. Game play is remarkably simple where nuance comes from a deeper understanding of strategy and card combinations but despite the simplicity, every aesthetic piece of the game feels smooth and polished. Each mouse over or interaction comes with almost exactly the interaction you would expect or want as a player. The game understands its players’ desires and caters to them (except in the case of card balance occasionally), and it has shown after multiple expansion sets in over 4 years.
Hearthstone has various game modes akin to the formats in other paper trading card games like constructed standard that uses the most recent year and a half of released cards, wild constructed which allows for the use of every card in the game in combination, and a draft style arena mode where you use none of the cards in your owned collection to construct decks. The optimal strategies and decks change between formats drastically and no two are very alike, so there is always room for a change of pace when one becomes too monotonous. Additionally, like the DLC’s of most AAA games, Hearthstone releases expansion sets every few months to add cards to the pool, shake up the metagame (an overview of optimal strategies in a given format), or simply create new combinations for play. While the game play rules and model stays the same, the new cards allow for flexibility in a game that may become stale to its most frequent players playing similar combinations over the course of months.
Hearthstone does, however, do an excellent job keeping its audience engaged through its inherent simplicity for beginners and complex interactions and strategies for its veterans. The opening of every session has the innkeeper, a hearty dwarf offering you a seat by the hearth to play with other members of his tavern. That’s the story premise. Hearthstone relies on its mechanics more than narrative to keep players engaged. Each player gains a mana crystal per turn, up to 10, with which to play their card with higher costs being paid for more powerful cards. There are two types of cards in every deck: minions that represent Warcraft lore creatures and characters who have attack and health and spells that directly interact with players and minions. Minion combat is intuitive; a minion attacks with their attack value at either the opponent’s minions or opponent directly dealing their attack value of damage. Each minion and player have a health value of damage they can receive. When that value is exhausted, the minion is removed or the player loses the game. Lastly, each player can choose one of 9 classes to choose from who have specific cards to go along with their theme and a respective “hero power” that they can use every turn also akin to their theme.
Each class has a series of basic cards that you acquire very quickly from play a few games with them, but the majority of cards, like with any collectible card game, come from booster packs. These can be purchased with real money or coins acquired through regular game play. Additionally every card you open can be “disenchanted” for arcane dust, a currency used to craft any card you could want in your collection. This means that no matter what you open in your packs, you are always en route to the most desirable card to you as you can convert unwanted items into those. Additionally, Hearthstone packs will never contain a duplicate of the most rare cards in the game, legendaries. This makes it easier to acquire new powerful cards to build new decks.
When you have a completed deck with booster pack and basic cards, you can move over to constructed play against opponents in either casual or ranked modes. Casual mode allows you to try out your strategies or complete mini reward quests for extra gold but will have no penalty for a loss. Ranked play is the bread and butter for any Hearthstone veteran wanting to test his skills. Starting at rank 25 and going all the way down to rank 1, players rank up as they win against equally ranked opponents. With skill-based matchmaking, a player will always play against someone of their appropriate skill level, and if they are too skilled for their current ranking, they will very quickly rack up wins and rank up until games become more challenging. At the end of rank 1 is an entire new ladder for the elite players: Legend. At the end of every month is a new season. Players derank 4 ranks from the previous month and have a whole new set of rewards to earn as they climb back up to the top.
What really makes Hearthstone stand out from every other competitive or card game out there is the Blizzard Entertainment polish and love in literally every aspect of the game. There are 18 game boards of Warcraft locales on which players sling their virtual cards.[1] While hearthstone has no response on your opponent’s turn, there is always something to explore or click to find a new interaction on the board. They are inconsequential to the result of the game but fun and occupying in the minimal down time. Each click on the board itself or around is very tactile and satisfying. In short, things do what they feel like they should do. Cards zoom very quickly when moused over for easy reading, but then more slowly fall back in to place so as not to be too jolting. Alongside the smooth “mouse feel” comes more polish and love in each and every card. Artists are named for their hand drawn work in each card that is released, be it a new addition to the Warcraft lore or a famous character already established. Each card comes with a flavor text containing a pun, description, joke, or something else pleasing and additive.
Hearthstone has an amazing ability to stand out above other card games, virtual or tabletop, because it often feels responsive in the best way. Good play is rewarded through ranks; exploration is rewarded with small Easter eggs in and outside of the game; and card and deck balance is (usually) fair and quick. I personally have over 10,000 games played, 54 seasons in a row reaching the legend status, and am perhaps committing a sunk-cost fallacy but do not see myself quitting any time soon.
1. http://hearthstone.wikia.com/wiki/Game_boards- game boards
PS. My Battletag is Fraxure#1953 if you ever want to play
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